Welcome to my world

Aside from my fics, I'm not sure if anyone reads my Dreamwidth posts. I'll make them anyway as a kind of visual diary for myself.

Let's roll back to September 2021. I was going strong, had posted a challenge entry fic for July, August, September. I had another one in progress involving Oni!Kouki x Human!Mahiro that I seemed like I'd be finishing in September and posting in October for the challenge then.

Then... burnout hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd been on furlough from my job since March 2020 (minus a stint where I was called back for about 3 weeks in May, then got furloughed again). Just as my time on unemployment was about to end, my old job called me back. It was only part time though so I picked up another part-time / temp job at a music store to help me make a decent income until I could find something full time. Over a span of 6 days I worked a combined total of 40 hours at both jobs.

October burnout happened. My temp job ended, I was able to recover with just the one part time job. I did some writing, but kept getting stuck and wasn't able to advance much in any of my writing projects. Was also unable to sign up for the JLPT since not many test centers were open in the US and the site crashed repeatedly because so many people were trying to take the test. So that was disappointing.

January I started a new job. It was temporary, but full-time. I also got into danmei, so reading/watching danmei consumed me. I've been writing fic for a few of the books. Danmei has been my primary fandom this year. Anyway, two of my managers at the temp job were such bitches that I finally snapped. I quit in March. And a couple days later, I received an email from my fall temp job inviting me to interview for a full time position with benefits. Nice to know that my coworkers there really liked me and wanted me! Sign me up!

And fast forward to now. I've gotten promoted to assistant manager of our online store (our main client base for the online store is students renting instruments for band) and hopefully that will come with a pay raise too.

Danmei had distracted me from VK for a few months. But with Royz and Kiryu having a new album and a new single out, I've been inspired to pick up some of my projects again.

-Oni Kouki x human Mahiro
-Dir en Grey dealing with ghosts (I have two more fics in that series)

It's nice to see that people are still keeping VK fics going!

TItle: Skates and Sweets
Author: write_my_dreams 
Pairing: None
Genre: Gen
Warning: None
Rating: G
Chapter(s): 1/1
Summary: Tsunehito takes himself out of the running for World Championships when he breaks his ankle in a practice session. Just as he's resigned himself to a difficult few months, his good friend, Mahiro, invites him to come to the rink with him and see his new routine.
Author's Comment: For the August challenge at vkyaoi . I started taking ice skating lessons back in July, and remembered I'd started a fic where Tsunehito and Mahiro were ice skaters. I'd only written a few paragraphs of that story and couldn't find any notes or outlines for it to show what all I'd planned. So I filled it in.

 

It's been about three years since I logged onto Dreamwidth, posted any kind of VK fanfic, or even thought about writing any. 2018 me was convinced that I wouldn't be writing anymore. 2021 me is laughing.

So, what happened?

1) May 2021: I get hit hard by inspiration to work on another draft of The Art of Denial, a ghost story that began as fanfiction with Sakurai Atsushi being a costume designer who was being haunted by a sinister ghost. I wrote about 5 chapters as a fanfic, decided I'd do better making it an original work, and got an entire draft of a novel written for NaNoWriMo. I've had ideas for redoing it, but until May it was basically in development hell until I made a commitment to writing it again.

2) Since Ayumu was Atsushi at first, I started listening to my favorite Buck-Tick songs again.

3) I decided at the end of June that far too much time, stress, and money had been invested into my Japanese education to just let it go to waste. I was going to relearn Japanese, study, take the JLPT finally (I've been thinking of doing this since 2016), and see about finding work as a translator since that would marry my love of writing with my love of Japanese.

4) Started watching anime again so I could hear the Japanese language.

5) Listening to Buck-Tick snowballed into listening to D, Kiryu, and basically everyone else I'd been super into. I'm incredibly fortunate that out of all the bands I'd been super into, Mejibray is the only one that disbanded (and that one fucking hurt to see since Mejibray had really helped me get through my toxic work experience over in Japan in 2014/2015) and Nocturnal Bloodlust had a lineup change when someone fucked over Cazqui and Daichi. Still hurt and I still get random depression over those two not being the same.

6) My best friend who's basically my fandom gateway and I were pulled back into VK at around the same time. She drew my attention to a big, Fallout style apocalyptic AU we'd written and never finished. Cue us smacking our 2016ish selves for never doing so. We decided to drop our current project and continue with that.

7) I read through a ton of my old projects and found a bunch that I want to work on again. Second Chances, Flashes of Shadows, some of my other vampire fics.

I'm going to finish up 3-4 projects I'm working on for the DC Comics fandom and the couple I'm doing for Marvel. Then I'll tackle my VK projects. I always planned to make them into original works at some point, so finishing the story will be good practice for me. Even if it's just for me and a couple other people.

To anyone still here, you're great!

Oh and also: I've finally become a Dir en Grey fan. For whatever reason I just never got into them. As is so often my way of getting into a band, I saw a picture of someone pretty (Toshiya with long hair), had to investigate, and liked the music. I've been a VK fan since I was 17. I'm 29 now so uh, better late than never? 

So I've had about 3 good days out of the New Year so far. I got over the worst of my cold from late December, still had the cough but my voice was at least sounding more like mine instead of like a croaking frog. THEN I get hit with something. It felt just like a cold, only I was so run down and exhausted from doing something as simple as taking a shower. I'm wondering if it was the flu? Anyway I did recover from that and now today my stomach has decided to commit mutiny. I eat? It's not happy. I don't eat? It's not happy. 

At a point where I'm hungry but eating makes me nauseous, I have a headache, feel kind of feverish, and because I am hungry I have the mentioned headache and feel nauseous. Cry. It's just a lose-lose situation.

The one good part of this month is that I found a good plane ticket to Austria. That's going to be my birthday present. I leave February 20th and come back on March 3rd. I'm so excited! I haven't been to Austria since December 2013 and I haven't seen my best friend in person since February 2015. Between mental health, physical health, and financial issues neither of us has been able to afford an international flight. Plotting out ideas definitely helped when I was sick.

Guess I'll try napping and see if that helps any. 

1) Completed Whatever It Takes, my entry for the DCU Big Bang. Minimum requirement was 10K. Mine was 22,272(!!) With edits and rewrites spilling over through the first 9 days of November, this took up a good 20K of my NaNo requirement.

2) Hit a block after completing WIT. Made myself go over Second Chances. Turns out I had rough drafts for Chapters 9-12 (12 being the end) mostly complete. I went through them today, finished up a couple scenes, played around with order, and am quite close to having the rest of this fic done aside from editing. 

3) Toying with other ideas or finishing up projects I'd started. Not sure I want to commit to finishing up VK series.

How's everyone else's writing going? 

 Tomorrow... well... kind of... I'm off to NYC to visit with my sister before she moves to Colorado at the end of the year. I say "kind of" because my plane leaves at 6 AM. The airport is about an hour away from my house, and due to my anxiety issues I feel far more comfortable arriving somewhere with ample time to spare. I want to get to the airport around 4:30. So have to leave the house by 3:30 at the latest. 

Going to be a total zombie that first day. But it'll fun to be back in New York as a tourist. 

Once I get done with all my DCU writing challenges, I'll be coming back to work on finishing up MiA's story. Finally. And I have some stuff started with San to show his story as well. There is hope for that boy, it just takes a while. 

Have a good weekend everyone! 

About a week ago I wrote up a draft for the July challenge featuring San and MiA going on vacation. Then JayTim week happened and it was out of sight out of mind until yesterday... when I realized I needed to have Chapter 9 done before I could feasibly post MiA and San traveling together. So while I was updating my Ao3 account I noticed the first entry into a multi-chapter paranormal universe I'd planned and failed to write. Suddenly I was inspired to write about Mahiro and Subaru after that story ended.

I wrote this in about an hour and a half so whoo for last minute inspiration!

Title: No More Ghosts
Author: write_my_dreams 
Pairing: Mahiro (Kiryu) x Subaru (Royz)
Genre: AU, supernatural (post), romance
Warning: No content to warn about
Rating: PG
Chapter(s): 1/1
Summary: Friends and family send Mahiro and Subaru on a much needed vacation to Hawaii after the conclusion of their paranormal problems. Subaru finds Mahiro's choice of inflight movie extremely inappropriate. (This is a direct sequel to a previously posted fic: Don't Mess with Ouija Boards. You don't need to read it to understand this story, just know that Mahiro and Subaru had been haunted but aren't anymore)
Author's Comment: Super last minute entry for the July prompt of "Wet and Wild" at vkyaoi. Mahiro's movie choices are what constitutes both the wet and the wild part of the theme.


( Read more... )

Title: Castles
Author: write_my_dreams 
Pairing: Ruki x Uruha
Genre: Romance, bandverse
Warning: No content to warn about.
Disclaimer: The band members portrayed do not belong to me. Uruha would wear tiny shorts all the time if they did.
Chapter(s): 1/1
Rating: PG
Summary: New couple Ruki and Uruha can't resist stolen moments and kisses during a break in filming Cassis. 
Author's Comment: My last minute entry for the vkyaoi challenge. I got the first half written a couple weeks ago, got slammed by writer's block, then finally got it done tonight. The GazettE was the first visual kei band I fell in love with. My then best friend got me into them and also had me shipping Ruki/Uruha because she adored their height difference and was happy to ply me with fanart in return for fanfiction. I chose Cassis because it was the first GazettE song I really got into. I can't recall if it was the first of their songs I ever heard, but it's the first one I recall loving.

Maybe it's the whole move to Dreamwidth that's inspired me or the fact that I've plunged wholeheartedly into DC, but I've now committed to 3 challenges.

1) the VKYaoi one, and I had my idea in the shower so I'll just have to work on getting that done in time.

2) DCU Reverse Big Bang - Artists create their art first. Writers come up with prompts in July. Nothing I can do but wait for that, but I'm curious to see what I'll get. 

3) And the DCU Big Bang. I was at first torn between using an idea I've already started or starting something new. Thankfully I went with the former as this idea of mine is now a lot stronger and will hopefully be easier to write. Keeping this project under wraps until I can post, but I'm quite sure it'll be easy for me to get the 10K minimum word goal out of it. I think my crappy rough draft alone was 4K.

How is everyone else's writing going?